Congratulations on your decision to sell your house! Now the hard work begins. You will realize along the journey that selling is much much harder than buying. When it comes to selling, there is no single recipe. It is a function of wait time, asking price, market condition and cost of repair. The recipe that will suit you will depend on order of importance of the above parameters. Here is a typical timeline:

Appraisal

Inspection

Pricing

Repair

Staging/Tidying

Putting it in market

Once the house enters the market, you may have run iterations of the above steps.
For e.g., you may have to bring down the price of house if its not attracting buyers or spice it up a bit more if you are stubborn on the price. The details of each of the steps can be viewed online, but soon one would realize its more an art than science. Frequently one has to iterate the above steps based on the feedbacks. This blog discusses some ways to get the elusive feedback

Websites which help deciding the market price of the home. Sites like zillow, redfin should help one in this regard. Be wary of ‘sellers bias trap’, its always a good idea to check your expectations with http://www.comelyhouse.com/

Staging or improvement tips before marketing house. Houzz and a few other blogs provide expert tips on home improvement. If you are deciding to do home improvement yourself, get feedback from friends. http://www.comelyhouse.com/ would be a great site to get bias-free feedback on photos you decide to post.

Decision to spend on repairs/mark down the price of the home is a very subjective decision. I would recommend one make a decision based on age of the house. On a older house staging is less important than fixing fundamental problems (plumbing, kitchen, flooring)

Marketing your house is the next important step. Selling a house is like selling a startup. We recommend online portals like redfin, zillow, trulia to reach wider audience than selling through agents or selling directly. This is a very iterative step. Keep changing your strategy based on the market feedback

Quite often we wonder why our listing does not get enough traction, when we have priced right for the market. When similar houses in the neighborhood get sold for more, it just gives a lost feeling. Here are some tips that can help you position your house better for the market.

Right pricing. As home owners we tend to price based on market value for similar homes. But we overlook the appeal of the houses. To drive home the point, here are two different listings from the same zip code.

The price/sq feet for listing 1 is 575$ and price/sq feet for listing 2 is 406$. The reason why listing 1 is failing to get traction is obvious. I am not trying to promote home staging or improving curb appeal. Even a shack can be sold, provided its priced accordingly. There are several resources out there to find out how your listing compares with others. comelyhouse.com is a good resource to get all the data points about your listing. It compares your listing with others based on price, locality and provides a feedback.

Home appeal. Staging goes a long a way not just in improving the price of the house but even to get the much needed traction from buyers.

Structural problems. Data shows that buyers prefer an over priced structurally good home over an under priced home with structural problems. This may not be a problem to get initial traction, but to sell the house take care of the structural problems

Timing. Alas this is not in your hands. Market fluctuation is a clear and present danger, so some times waiting out could be the only good option.

Photos. Photos create the first impression in sellers mind about the listing. When your listing is not getting enough traction its time to get feed back about your listing or upload more appealing photos.